By all rational reason. The AUD should gain on the USD over the next year or so. This does not mean it will though! Rationality and reason obviously have little to do with financial markets. Lucky for me the funds we will be using are in GPB. I would be very annoyed if I had to use AUD right now.

BTW I am a licensed electrician. Please do not try and wire up your 240 system, or if you do at least get it checked by someone who is qualified. Not only will you be breaking the law, you will be endangering anyone who comes on your boat if you made a critical mistake.

There are inspectors who not only check when you have made an error and issue heavy fines and loss of licence, but they also check randomly to ensure people keep to the standards.

Jims way of plug and play is fine. Also to be realistic, a COMPETENT amateur can do some simple, safe, if not legal 240V wiring. The problem is many incompetent people are literally too incompetent to make a competent decision on their own competence and make the most basic safety critical mistakes. I was handed a drill that had the most simple DIY task performed on it. The owner changed the plug top. The drill "worked fine" at his house and his mates house, but a someone elses house it kept "cutting off the circuit breaker". The circuit breaker it was cutting off was the RCD (I forgot the name of the USA version, but it cuts power when it detects loss of current to earth to prevent electrocution).

What the guy done was he joined the neutral to the earth pin on the plug so that whenever the drill was used current flowed in the earth wires of the house rather than the neutral until it reached the switchboard. However the drill worked. This would liven up any pipes/plumbing in the house, and any metal appliance case that is plugged in when the drill is used. His house did not have an RCD so nothing tripped. If any critical earth connection failed someone having a shower/holding a kettle etc could have been killed.

Just because it works does not mean it is safe. So to anyone thinking of doing your own 240v work, how competent are you really? Do you even understand what I was talking about above?

Yes I do, those ELCBs are great life savers and should be mandatory on all installations even old ones.
That was quite a major error with that plug you were very lucky, I shows even a professional like yourself can be caught by someone else's error.
In the industry I work in independent inspections are required for critical tasks, It's good to see that the electrical industry is doing the same.
Electricity kills, I'm going to make a point of getting my boats checked now.

Sorry if I was not clear. I was not caught out by anything, but I could have been. I was given the drill so I could look at it because it was known to be causing breakers to trip at some houses. I found the prob right away. The error was major in its possible outcome, but minor in that it was easy for someone to make. Just a matter of terminating one wire in the wrong terminal in the end of the plugtop. The point is it that someone who thinks they know what they are doing and does not, can easily make such a simple mistake and not know about it.

ELCBs are mandatory now on any new installation, any time you sell a house or rent one, it must have one. That only leaves old owner occupied houses that have not changed hands in years and have not had any electrical work carried out on them in the last few years.

99% of this thread has drifted OT an the original topic was probably done to death and I am sure the OP now fully understands the price variation.

Whist the talk about electoral installations are off topic, they are quite relevant. Now people know that if they buy a US boat and want to run 240v it is not as simple as replacing the wall fittings and so on.

Whist the talk about electoral installations are off topic, they are quite relevant. Now people know that if they buy a US boat and want to run 240v it is not as simple as replacing the wall fittings and so on.

But no one would ever find it in this thread would they...???

New threads for new topics are the way to go and a lot easier on the search function, never ending threads with dozens of twists and turns are a

This was a fantastic thread, but I think it has run it's course.
What would be good is a wiki page with all the latest info on this.
There is a lot of good info here but also a lot of sidetracking.
Good luck to those who are new to this thread and have to start at the beginning.

Whilst I agree that it would be impossible to find this information in here, but hopefully anyone who is looking at importing a yacht will go though this thread and eventually they will come aware of the issues with the voltage.

I wonder how many Aussies who have started look at US yachts had never even realised there was a voltage difference and once they realised there was the difference just assumed they could simply replace the plugs and the 110v devices. They would perhaps never think to research more into what seems to be a simple fix.

I think it would be good for someone deep into the research process to create a "sticky" thread summarizing the many issues involved. That may give a simple overview of all the issues discussed and give people topics to research further.

I think it would be good for someone deep into the research process to create a "sticky" thread summarizing the many issues involved. That may give a simple overview of all the issues discussed and give people topics to research further.

I proposed this, and even made a thread that summarizes the main info in all these threads. The link is even in this thread a few pages back somewhere before the 5 page epirb discussion and includes a spreadsheet to work out how much your boat importation is going to cost. But the nature of this forum (being unable to edit posts) makes it impossible to keep it updated without adding new posts, so in the end finding the most up to date info would require reading a whole massive thread and we are almost back to square one.

We had a strong interest in following the path of importing a boat in to Australia from the US until the Aussies decided to forego establishing the Physician Assistant profession in which my wife intended to work. Even though we have family there, trying to get a boat imported (along with a couple of cats) seems impractical now that the job situation is a problem.
With the impending second recession about to hit the US, the economics my once again become attractive... sure seems like a better place to live and cruise if one can swing it... Capt Phil